Remove clutter in a Word document

[John Gregory]

When multiple people are editing a single document - passing it around and
using track changes, cut & paste, etc., the document seems to accumulate a
lot of clutter and the file size becomes very large and unstable.

It seems that the Word document keeps all of the individual file settings,
comments, edits etc. from each person who worked on the document even when
they are deleted from the active view.

Is there a way to purge all unused or old code from the file while still
preserving the current formatting?

The only way I have found so far is to save it as a text file, and then add
the formatting back in. When I do this the file size is back to normal.

 

[Jay Freedman]

When multiple people are editing a single document - passing it
around and using track changes, cut & paste, etc., the document seems
to accumulate a lot of clutter and the file size becomes very large
and unstable.

It seems that the Word document keeps all of the individual file
settings, comments, edits etc. from each person who worked on the
document even when they are deleted from the active view.

Is there a way to purge all unused or old code from the file while
still preserving the current formatting?

The only way I have found so far is to save it as a text file, and
then add the formatting back in. When I do this the file size is
back to normal.

For tracked changes and comments, you'll need to accept or reject them
instead of just hiding them
(http://www.shaunakelly.com/word/trackchanges/HowTrackChangesWorks.html).

Cut&paste and edits shouldn't increase the file size unless they're being
tracked.

If that doesn't keep the excessive file size under control, you might be
getting some document corruption
(http://word.mvps.org/FAQs/AppErrors/CorruptDoc.htm).

--
Regards,
Jay Freedman
Microsoft Word MVP
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[John Gregory]

Thank you for your response, I will go through the suggestions on the MVPS
website.